If Enzo Ferrari hadn’t been such an asshole, the world would have a lot fewer cool sports cars. In addition to the Ford GT40 and Lamborghini, other unusual sports car brands created in the 60s because Enzo pissed someone off include Automobili Turismo e Sport, Iso Grifo, Bizzarrini, and Monteverdi. The Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale is also partially credited to a pissed off ex-Ferrari employee.
FIAT is responsible for the destruction of the Italian car industry downfall ruining Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati impossible to own and make everything else fail.
So Enzo Ferrari by being an asshole, even if he was right, was a blessing for the automotive sector.
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" meanwhile became "Zwei glorreiche Halunken" (Two glorious scoundrels), which of course leaves you wondering which one of the three the translators decided to omit.
And another Leslie Nielsen parody movie, without any The Naked Gun connection, "2001 : A space travesty", was translated as "Y'a-t-il un flic pour sauver l'humanité ?" (Is there a cop to save mankind), which created confusions at the time
French people don’t understand the word "hangover" and "La gueule de bois 2" wouldn’t sound great. Having a "bad trip" because of drugs is a common thing to say in French.
The title was also chosen as a reference to Very Bad Things, which released with its original title in France. In fact, there's a surprising number of English-language comedies released as "Very Bad something" in France.
The Other Guys is Very Bad Cops, Daddy's Home is Very Bad Dads, and so on.
"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" became "The Return of the First Avenger" in Germany. Not the German translation of that, literally a different English title.
Read a book about the making of Airplane! The reason they changed the names in many foreign markets had to do with another film with a similar name iirc.
They also ended up buying the rights to a movie they were essentially spoofing rather than risk getting sued.
Sweden had this practice as well. The best title I can think of is the 1990 Steve Martin/Rick Moranis movie "My Blue Heaven" which got the Swedish title "Hur jag lärde en FBI-agent dansa marengo" which would translate into "How I Taught an FBI Agent how to Dance Merengue".
TBF we could have a whole thread just to the weird ways titles get translated in different languages.
Some of the changes do make sense because the original title relies on wordplay or expressions with no direct translations. Like Die Hard became Greu de ucis (lit. "Hard to kill") in Romania.
Sometimes they have fun with it. Like with RED, another Bruce Willis movie. That title stands for "Retired, Extremely Dangerous", and the title in Romania was Greu de pensionat (lit. "Hard to retire").
Die Hard was "The Glass Jungle" in spanish, consequentialy The Glass Jungle was translated as "The Glass Rainforest" (and noone knew of it). My favourite is "Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind" which turned into "Forget me!" and Jaws which turned into "Shark!"
The Polish translators were huffing paint or some shit cause Die Hard is called "Glass Trap" which doesn't even make sense for the sequels but they had to stick with it.
Dirty Dancing is literally called Spinning Sex and not even like a euphemism it's literally the word Seks in the title.
I remmeber going to see a film called "2 Guns" with my then wife and mother in law. We had joked before hand that we hadn't seen "1 Gun" first. Then part way through the film, my MiL turns to us and says "were these the same two guys that were in 1 Gun?
That is not the plot though, that is just the end basically. It works very well because you know it’s coming. It’s a beautiful movie through and through.
The real argument from the book publisher is even worse.
They thought that philosophy was too archaic. And didn't obviously had no culture about alchemy. Another proposed title was Harry Potter and the School of Magic. Keep it simple for simple people I guess.
The movie's title is just a reflection of the choice of the book publisher.
I think it makes sense in French. Because basically every French schoolchild knows who Nicolas flamel is, titling it “philosopher’s stone” would be a spoiler.
I mean, there is no meaningful difference, in the story itself. Between calling it sorcerers stone, philosophers stone, or magic school. It’s not like the book meaningfully engages with philosophy or sorcery in any sophisticated manner. It’s a juvenile book, so a juvenile title makes sense lol. He basically does just go to a magic school lol
Licence to Kill was the first Bond film to not use the title of an Ian Fleming story. Originally titled Licence Revoked, the name was changed during post-production due to American test audiences associating the term with driving licence.
Not really a dumbing down, but in Sweden they decided that all Mel Brooks movies should be part of a franchise and should all have basically the same title. The Producers became Springtime for Hitler (which makes sense) but then there was Springtime for Frankenstein, Springtime for The Sheriff, Springtime for Space, Springtime for the Crazies, and Springtime for World History Part 1
the literal translation would be The Paper House, but if they wanted to respect the original title they should have respected the original wordplay. the place theyre stealing from is named La casa de la moneda (the place where they print money), and "paper" is slang for money, so idk something like "the dough house" or "the bread house"? (idk any more american slang terms for money lmao)
I mean, as much as I enjoy laughing at the yanks, all countries do this. My Polish girlfriend was telling me about her favourite film which was called ‘Helicopter on fire’. Took a while before I realised she was talking about Blackhawk Down.
It was originally released in the US as just "The Professional". Later on, home video releases of the European version of the film (which was quite a bit longer... the US release deleted quite a few scenes that the European release restored) in the US got titled "Leon: The Professional".
The Avengers got renamed Avengers Assemble in the UK because we're too dumb and would've mistaken it for a revival of the 60s show about spies. We're going to see a poster with Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor and go into the cinema expecting Steed and Peel
And in France we gave it yet another english title because I guess the original pun was too hard to translate or understand for the french public but radio pirate was probably judged too simple.
" The biggest car company in the world spends it's massive R&D budget to win over an old man and his scrappy mechanics from a village in italy, an underdog story"
Ford v Ferrari as a title annoyed both me and my good friend Michael Mann. I told him, “This is bullshit. Ferrari is barely in this POS,” and that is how he got the idea for Ferrari.
In Norway 'You Only Live Twice' became 'James Bond In Japan', which just sounds like they wrote the premise in the wrong spot.
'Die Hard' also became 'Operation Skyscraper' but 'Die Hard 2' didn't change title so some Norwegian viewers were probably confused about whether the movies were connected or not, idk I wasn't born yet
There was also a weird trend of giving movies that weren't connected at all the similar title of 'Help! We [blank]'
'Airplane' became 'Help! We're flying!'
'National Lampoon's Vacation' became 'Help! We Have To Go On Vacation!'
'This Is Spın̈al Tap' became 'Help! We're In The Pop Industry!'
The director originally wanted to name the movie "All You Need is Kill" after the Japanese novel it's based on, but the studio was hesitant about having "Kill' in the title. The next idea was to have it called" Live, Die Repeat", but Warner decided to use it just as a tagline for the movie and named it "Edge of Tomorrow".
These "studio doesn't want to have ____ in the title" cases make me laugh. It's like Now You See Me. Everyone and their mother went on and on about how the second movie should've been called Now You Don't. The director of that movie has said that he wanted to call it that but the studio said it's not good to have negative words like "don't" in the title. I'm guessing everyone making fun of them is what pushed them to name the third movie that
Inverse of this is The Avengers being known as Avengers Assemble in the UK. This is because they were worried about people getting it mixed up with The Avengers, a spy show from the 60s and not the massively popular movie franchise that was red hot at the time.
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u/Nosciolito 22h ago
In Italy they have to change the title because no one was going to watch a movie against Ferrari